


Sungrazer

by Sheshaventures



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Ambiguous Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Ascians (Final Fantasy XIV), Body Horror, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25719766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheshaventures/pseuds/Sheshaventures
Summary: Sungrazer: a comet that passes extremely close to the Sun at perihelion – sometimes within a few thousand kilometers of the Sun's surface. The strong evaporation and tidal forces they experience often lead to their fragmentation.In deviating from the charted course, will you hold strong? Or will you falter.
Relationships: Ardbert & Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Elidibus & Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 23





	Sungrazer

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to those who helped me to keep going in the interim. And special thanks to a starshine and a heartwright, I owe you both more than I could ever say. Anyway, it's only been a million years, so I do hope you enjoy.

The vast sky vaults high above you, once more shining with gilded Light that beats down in angelic sentence. You have become a liability, and despite the soothing touch of Ryne and the welcoming words of others in the Crystarium you feel the itch in your bones. A tautness to your skin. It will not be denied, this roiling mass inside of you, and even now you feel it lapping at the edges of your awareness.

Every few steps the color drains from the landscape, ever so slightly, before its vivid spectrum roars forth once more. How long, you wonder, before it continues to fade. How long before the crackling crawl of gold-etched marble creeps across your skin. How long before that itch becomes an ache, becomes a soreness in your back that even now you seem to feel.

Perhaps the beginning of wings.

A liability. Unable to do the very thing you were _meant_ to - but not even that, it seems. Never from the start. Other minds formed the schemes and manipulated the outcome to their desires. _You_ merely followed where you were led and did what you were told, a weapon wielded by others to the bitter end.

Ardbert's blue gaze is understanding. He stood where you now do, once. A vaunted hero poised to bring ruination upon the very world he’d sought to save. He is perhaps the only one who understands - truly, the only one who ever _could_ \- and when your hand meets his a resolve forms in your heaving chest. 

But not the one he thinks.

Your footsteps lead you not towards where you may take an amaro, no they instead lead you towards the Crystal Tower. Towards the place where, even now, the guard at the front merely steps aside for you to pass with merely a somber nod. Ardbert watches as you take steps towards that mirror in the Ocular, that doorway, but says nothing. He understands.

For he, too, harbored the desire to buck the fate thrust upon you by any and all. He would not cry out to stop you, as your fingers stretch to pass into the space between worlds. No, he would join you - and your thoughts are confirmed when his gauntlet gently clasps your other hand, lifting it from your side in a steady grasp. He shall follow you through, then. Despite the silence, you know from the deepest part of you that he would have your back until the end.

You land in the space you always have when traveling back and forth, the few times you did so. The itch has grown more intense with the passage, insects swarming over your skin and burning akin to flame, and that soreness now has sunk deep into your very marrow. You almost stumble upon taking your first step but Ardbert is there to hold you as you gasp, shimmering fluid trickling from your lips. You cough and clutch your chest, droplets of white splattering over the stones at your feet.

"Not here," is all you manage.

But you know - you both know - that the teleportation will take the last of you.

You make it count.

A favorite vista is your chosen destination, travel there directly made possible by a small aetheryte shard, the path long since memorized during times when you needed comfort. For a few brief moments you see the night sky and its diamond-strewn fabric of stars, and the darkness is comforting, welcoming after so much Light. Or, oh, perhaps that is because you no longer may keep your eyes open, lids drooping heavily. You list to the side, unbalancing, and even Ardbert’s support cannot keep you upright.

The ground becomes your companion, as solid and steadfast as the man at your side.

Your vision goes white over the creeping sound of crystalline Light flooding your ears, tearing you open, _changing_ you and-

Ardbert is your sole companion as the gilded sky rips open with the scream of a false Mother shrieking in his ears.

The pain is horrific, worse than any and all.  
  
Fluid chokes you as you convulse, howl strangled into gurgling and you know it’s coming it’s here you will become everything you sought to kill you will eat you will feast you are **_hungry-_ **

But you do not turn.

Robes as white as the sky that glitter with gold catch you before you do.

Clawed gloves pierce your skin.

You are writhing.

An axe through the apparition but once more it does nothing.

You are screaming through brilliance.

Blue eyes _blaze_ as he recognizes this one.

Speech like liquid silk graces your ears yet the words do nothing, carmine mask bending close and snatching you away. Ardbert snatches hold of your clothing just as the teleportation takes you to a field of powdery white - familiar to him but not to you.

Under the Star's gaze now upon the surface of a lunar prison does your Light threaten to rend you in two, but this close to the center of all that is Dark, in the hands of he who is closest to it, to Him?

Darkness rises to extinguish the Light, to root it from your soul - not to smother, far too much for that, but to slip between it and your core and Ardbert watches as Light sheers off under Elidibus’s fervent work, bit by bit, into the emptiness of space around you. It sparkles and glitters distantly as it whirls away in dancing ribbons, like stardust cast adrift in the celestial nursery.

Your seizing stops.

The gloved hands lift.

Ardbert crouches over you, wary and defensive yet knowing he may do nothing.

He does all the same.

-

Time passes.

-

Your eyelids lift, cracking open with a mighty effort. You burn everywhere on the inside, scraped raw and hollow, but your back no longer sears with the threat of twisted wings.

Lifting your head, you say nothing when you see the Ascian who stands before you, when you see your surroundings. You have not the strength for it.

A memory crosses your mind, a young boy robed in white saying how this man cares more about the Star than any other. Who claimed to serve a friend, who claimed to apprentice to a master who seeks balance above all things. Did you know, perhaps, in your subconscious? Is that what drove you to the Source? That somehow, you knew he would stop you, one way or another. End your life. Save it.

No, not save. You had no notions of that.

But here, inexplicably, you live.

"Why?" With how parched your throat has become, the word is drier than the moondust around you.

"To ensure survival of our Star."

The words are musical, as they always have been, but very little is revealed. You know now what he means by it, this time. For a moment, you wonder how Emet-Selch fares, with the night suddenly returned to the First all at once.

"Good. Amaurot deserves gleaming spires once again." You feel Ardbert tense over you but cannot see why, as your eyes have slipped closed once more. Cannot see how the cowled head turns sharply in your direction.

Perhaps Elidibus will execute you for that. Perhaps not. It is time to wait, either to die or to live.

  
But whatever your fate? It was what _you_ had chosen.

**Author's Note:**

> This will be further explored!


End file.
